League of Legends Betting Sites – Online LoL Betting

League of Legends is THE most popular esports game for betting on. A senior source at a leading betting site recently told us that over half of all the esports wagers they take are on League of Legends matches. We’ve been given similar figures by some other sites too.

Are you surprised at how popular League of Legends betting is? We’re not. The , with millions of fans regularly watching the professional contests. These contests are ideal for betting on, so it’s only natural that some fans enjoy placing a wager or two. It’s a great way for them to try to profit from their knowledge of the game.

If you’re interested in betting on League of Legends contests, we’ve got some good news for you. Virtually ALL the big esports betting sites cover these contests, meaning there are plenty of choices of where to place your wagers. You need to choose wisely though; not all sites meet the same high standards.

If you don’t know what you’re looking for, we’ve got some MORE good news for you. You can find a list of our recommended League of Legends betting sites right here! We’ve tested and compared a range of different sites, and the ones listed below have come out on top.

We fully believe that these are the BEST sites for betting on League of Legends at this moment in time. Go ahead and join any one of them with the confidence that you’ll have a good experience. We take great care to ensure that we only recommend top quality sites to our readers, and that’s exactly what we’ve done here.

Would you like to know WHY we recommend these sites? Of course you would! There are actually several reasons, and we’ll explain them all below for you. We’ll also provide some basic details on the League of Legends game for those of you who aren’t too familiar with it. We’ll talk you through how to bet on League of Legends contests, and there are some useful tips to improve your chances of making money.

Why We Recommend These Sites

A lot of people who bet on esports also bet on traditional sports such as soccer, basketball and tennis. As a result, they tend to be familiar with the benefits of betting online. Most of them also recognize the importance of choosing the right site, and think carefully about where they deposit and place their wagers.

There are a large number of esports fans, though, who are COMPLETELY new to betting. They have an interest in betting on games such as League of Legends, but they don’t really know how to get started. Although many of them will spend some time researching what’s involved, some decide to jump straight in. They sign up at the first esports betting site they can find, deposit their money and start placing wagers.

This is a HUGE mistake.

The basics of esports betting are fairly straightforward, so it’s quite easy to get started without any prior betting knowledge. We do ADVISE that you try to learn a bit about what’s involved first, but it’s not essential. You can learn as you go along if you prefer. What you REALLY shouldn’t do, though, is sign up at a betting site without doing your research first.

There are hundreds of sports betting sites on the web. As , more and more of these sites have started taking wagers on professional esports contests. Unfortunately, not many of them are actually that good. Not for esports betting, anyway. And even worse, some of them are pretty shady operations. There are loads of sites that aren’t properly licensed and regulated, and these must be avoided at all costs.

This last point is why we put so much time and effort into ranking the best gambling sites in different categories. We’ve been running this website for many years now, and as experts in the online gambling industry, we believe we have an obligation to make sure our readers only bet and play at THE best sites.

To meet this obligation, we have a clear process for deciding which sites we should recommend to our readers. We rate how sites perform in all the key areas by using a combination of research, testing and our own personal experiences. We then rank them accordingly based on our findings. The best performers are the ones that we recommend.

This might sound straightforward enough, but A LOT of work goes into compiling our rankings. Here’s a list of just some of the factors that we considered when ranking the best League of Legends betting sites:

Safety & Reliability

Ease of Use

Banking Options & Processes

Bonuses & Rewards

Coverage of LoL Contests

Variety of LoL Betting
Options

Odds & Lines Available

Coverage of Other
Esports Games

Let’s take a look at these factors in more detail, and explain why they’re so important.

Safety & reliability

We told you earlier that some betting sites on the web are a bit shady. What did we mean by this? Well, the sad truth of the matter is that not all sites can be trusted with your money. There are a few operations that are likely to rip you off one way or another. For example, they might find an excuse not to pay out your winnings or refuse to honor a legitimate wager.

Sites like this are thankfully in the minority. They are out there though, and we do NOT want our readers using them. So, the very first thing we look at when ranking sites are issues of safety and reliability. We make 100% sure that a site can be trusted with your money before we even think about putting it on our shortlist.

How can we tell if a site can be trusted?

Licensing, regulation and reputation.

We only ever recommend sites that are properly licensed to provide online betting services, and operating legally in a regulated jurisdiction. These sites have to adhere to a strict code of conduct laid out by their regulators, so it’s difficult for them to rip you off even if they wanted to. And most of them DON’T want to, which is why they get licensed in the first place.

Although holding a valid online betting license is a good indicator that a site can be trusted, it’s not a cast-iron guarantee. That’s why we also do some additional research looking into a site’s reputation. We talk to industry insiders, for example, and search for reports of unethical behavior. We basically try to establish whether or not they have a solid track record for treating their customers in the right way.

Once we have complete confidence that a site can be trusted, we then consider them for our rankings. Although, we still have to check how they perform in all the other important areas as well.

Ease of use

Ease of use is a key ranking factor for us. With all the recent advances in technology, there’s simply no excuse for site not being user-friendly. The process for signing up should be quick and simple, and the betting interface should be well designed and functional. Finding and placing wagers should be easy, not a chore.

Banking options & processes

If you’re going to bet online for real money, you obviously need to be able to deposit some funds. The best sites make this very easy to do by providing a straightforward process for depositing. They also offer a variety of different banking options, so customers can choose to deposit via a method that suits them.

We like to see sites offer at least a few of the following banking methods.

Visa

MasterCard

Debit/Check Card

Bank Transfer

Western Union

MoneyGram

Neteller

Skrill

Check

It’s also important that a site handles withdrawals in the right way. There will (hopefully!) be some occasions when you have some winnings to withdraw, and you should be able to get those winnings without any hassle.

We always request a couple of withdrawals as part of our testing. Sites that process them quickly and efficiently score very highly with us.

Bonuses & rewards

One of the big advantages of betting online is all of the bonuses and rewards that are available. These are rarely worth HUGE sums of money, but they can still provide a welcome boost to your bankroll. For obvious reasons, we prefer to recommend sites that are at least reasonably generous with the bonuses and rewards they offer to their customers.

Now, we wouldn’t recommend a site JUST because there’s a nice signup bonus offer. In fact, it’s often the shady sites that offer the biggest bonuses. Their offers are meaningless though, because they have no intention of actually letting you win any money. If a site scores well in all the other important areas, however, then good bonuses and rewards are definitely a valuable benefit.

If you’d like to learn more about how bonuses and rewards work, please take a look at the following page.

The factors we’ve discussed so far are important for ALL the categories we rank betting sites in. These next few factors are all specific to ranking the best League of Legends betting sites.

Good coverage of LoL contests is obviously important. Many sites are still very limited in the number of contests they offer betting markets on, so they’re basically no use if you want to bet regularly. The sites we’ve recommended, however, cover all the major contests as an absolute minimum. Some of them cover virtually EVERY professional LoL contest, which means many more opportunities for finding good wagers to place.

If you’re interested in learning more about the biggest LoL contests, please take a look at the following article. You can also keep up to date with the current schedule for contests at .

League of Legends offers more betting options than any other esports game. There all kinds of different wagers you can place on contests, but not all sites offer the full range. We prefer to recommend the sites that DO offer a varied range of betting options, as again, this provides you with more opportunities.

We provide details on some of the different LoL wagers further down this page.

Odds & lines available

The odds and lines available at different LoL betting sites can vary. Not often by a lot, but by enough to be significant. There are some sites that consistently offer the best odds and lines, and those are the ones we like to recommend. This is simply because getting better odds and lines has a direct impact on how much money you win from your successful wagers.

Coverage of other esports games

This is not as important as the other factors we’ve discussed, but it’s still something we take into account for our rankings. We know that a lot of people who bet on LoL contests also like to bet on other esports games, so we try to recommend that sites that make this possible. Although we don’t necessarily expect sites to cover ALL the different games, we like to see them at least cover the most popular ones. These include the following.

Counter-Strike:
Global Offensive

StarCraft II

Hearthstone:
Heroes of Warcraft

Call of Duty

About League of Legends

League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game. Developed and published by Riot Games, it was first released in 2009. It’s based on a “freemium” model, which means it’s free to play. There are, however, optional in-game purchases.

Usually referred to as LoL, League of Legends is one of the most popular video games of all time. Even though it’s several years old now, the game is regularly updated and has a huge, active fanbase. Riot Games announced in 2016 that there .

There are three main maps in LoL. Each map is laid out differently, and the rules of the game are different for each one. Summoner’s Rift is the map used for most professional LoL contests, and that’s the one we’ll focus on here. The other two maps are Twisted Treeline and Howling Abyss.

Here’s what the Summoner’s Rift map looks like.

We’ve highlighted the key areas in this map, and we’ll explain more about them shortly.

Summoner’s Rift matches are contested by two teams – the blue team and the red team. There are five players on each team, with each player controlling one character. The characters are known as champions, and there are six main types. Each type fulfills a certain role, as follows:

Assassins

These characters can inflict high levels of damage in a short space of time, but are weak defensively.

Tanks

Tanks are effectively the opposite of Assassins. They don’t deal much damage, but are strong defensively.

Fighters

Fighters are deal moderate damage and are average defensively. They’re basically a “compromise” character between Assassins and Tanks.

Marksmen

These characters can inflict sustained long-term damage, and are ideal for destroying turrets and buildings.

Mages

Mages are weak defensively, and have low mobility. They can deal powerful magic damage though, and have access to a range of spells.

Support

These characters exist to protect and support the other characters on their team.

Players choose which champion to play as in each match. There are several in each of the above categories, and over 130 in total. Here are some examples:

You can find a , with details about each one.

The objective in a Summoner’s Rift match is to destroy the opponent’s Nexus. Each team’s Nexus is located in their base, as highlighted on the map shown above. These buildings constantly spawn weak AI-controlled characters known as “minions”. Minions advance towards the enemy base via the three lanes shown on the map.

Players must use their champions to kill the enemy minions and protect their own. They can also venture into the jungle areas between the lanes, where they can kill neutral monsters to gain gold and experience. Gold allows players to buy new items for their champions while experience levels up the champions and makes them stronger, with new abilities or upgrading the abilities they already had.

For a complete guide to the League of Legends game, please see the following page.

How to Bet on League of Legends

There are two main ways to bet on League of Legends contests. The first is what we call real money esports betting, and that’s what’s offered by the sites we recommend. It’s very similar to traditional sports betting in many ways, as it’s all about placing wagers on various outcomes of matches. A lot of the outcomes are obviously different than those in traditional sports, though.

The other form of LoL betting is fantasy betting. This can involve real money too, but it works very differently. Instead of betting directly on the outcome of matches, you have to build “fantasy teams” that earn you points based on how players perform in matches. We explain more in the article listed below.

We’re going to focus on real money betting here. This is the most popular form of LoL betting and the one that offers the best opportunities for making money.

A popular LoL wager is on the overall winner of a league or tournament. This is a very straightforward wager and one you should definitely understand. All you have to do is pick the team that you think will win an upcoming competition, then decide how much to stake.

Each team participating in a competition will be assigned odds by a betting site. These odds are based on each team’s chances of winning, and they determine how much you can win if you pick the right team. Here’s an example from one of our recommended betting sites.

To place a wager here, you’d just have to click on the team you wanted to back and then enter your chosen stake. The stake money would be deducted from your online account, and any winnings would then be credited to the account when the competition is over.

The lower the odds, the more likely a team is to win. FaZe have the lowest odds here, so they’re considered the favorites. A $10 wager on them to win would return $40.00 (including stake), if successful. The teams with higher odds are considered less likely to win, so the potential payouts are greater. A $10 wager on Heroic, for example, would return $170 if successful.

The sites we recommend also offer betting markets for individual matches. There’s usually a selection of wagers available for each match, as you can see from the following screenshot.

The four wagers shown here are the most widely available for League of Legends matches. They’re also the ones we recommend focusing on. They’re all straightforward, and they’re among the easiest wagers to get right. Let’s take a look at how they work.

Match winner

This is a simple wager on which team will win the match. In the screenshot shown above, you’ll see that the two teams in this match are SK Telecom T1 and Jin Air Green Wings. SK Telecom has the lowest odds, so they’re the favorites. They’re actually VERY big favorites here, as the odds of 1.20 are extremely low. A $10 wager at 1.20 would return just $12 if successful.

Maps handicap

This wager works a little differently. We’re technically still betting on which team will win the match, but with a twist. The team’s scores are adjusted at the end of the match based on a handicap, and we have to decide which team will win AFTER the handicap is applied.

In the match shown above, the handicap is 1.5 maps. The favorite is DEDUCTED 1.5 maps at the end of the match (hence the “-“ symbol under their name) and the underdog is AWARDED 1.5 maps (hence the “+” symbol).

Let’s say we decided to back the favorites here with the -1.5 handicap. If they won the match by two maps to zero, we’d get a payout. This is because they’ve still won even with 1.5 maps deducted. If they won by two maps to one, however, we wouldn’t get a payout. With the deduction of 1.5 maps, they’ve effectively lost the match.

Please note the handicap has no impact on the ACTUAL result of the game. The deductions are purely for the purposes of betting.

We explain esports handicap betting in more detail in the following article.

This wager is based on how many maps are played in the match. Because it’s a best of three match, the, first team to win two maps is declared the winner. If a team wins the first two maps, then there’s no need for a third map to be played. The total number of maps can, therefore, be either two or three.

If we think that three maps will be played, we bet on over 2.5. If we think that two maps will be played, we bet on under 2.5. That’s all there is to it!

Please note that some matches are played in a best of five format. There can be three, four or five maps played in these matches, so the betting options for total maps are slightly different.

Correct score

Here we have to predict the exact final score of the match. This is a little more challenging than just picking the winner, but it’s not like a sport such as soccer where ANY score is possible. There are only four possible options, as either team can win 2-0 or 2-1. There are obviously more options in best of five maps.

Most of our recommended betting sites offer A LOT more wagers than the four we’ve discussed here. Examples include wagers on the total number of kills by each team, the total number of towers destroyed by a team and the team to draw first blood.

These other wagers are typically a lot harder to get right, as they’re based on much more precise outcomes. It’s tough to make money from them consistently, so they’re not worth spending much time on. In our opinion, they’re just for a bit of fun.

Now that you know the basics of how to bet on League of Legends, let’s take a look at how to improve your chances of winning some money.

League of Legends Betting Tips

We’d love to tell you that we can teach you exactly how to make money from betting on LoL. Unfortunately, there’s no magic recipe for success. You’re going to have to develop your own strategies and find ways to gain an edge. This is certainly achievable, but it will take some time and a lot of hard work.

In the meantime, what we CAN do is give you a few tips to help get you started. Although the following tips probably won’t turn you into an instant winner, they’ll definitely put you on the right track.

Know the game

Our first tip is a simple one, and perhaps an obvious one too. It’s worth mentioning though, as it’s very important. You MUST make sure you properly understand the League of Legends game before betting on it. You don’t necessarily have to play it all the time, or even much at all, but you do need to know HOW it’s played.

In addition to our own game guide that we mentioned earlier, you might want to look at . There are also some great videos on YouTube. Some of these cover the more advanced aspects of LoL in detail, while others are aimed towards beginners. The following video is one of the best we’ve found for explaining the basics of the game.

Another way to improve your LoL knowledge is to watch as many contests as you can. Websites such as stream most professional matches live, and also upload recordings of them afterward. A lot of the professional players also have Twitch and YouTube channels where they stream themselves playing, which are good to watch as well.

Keep track of patches

Riot Games regularly updates LoL with new patches. Some of these are very minor, but some can have a major impact on gameplay. They can lead to teams having to adjust their playing strategies, or even introducing a whole new playing style. So it’s VITAL that you keep track of them and see what kind of effects they have.

Study the teams and players

You can’t make good betting decisions unless you’re familiar with the teams and players you’re betting on. It’s important to study the teams and players and get to know them. You need to know about the way they play, the strategies they use and their strengths and weaknesses. This is the ONLY way to make accurate predictions about the outcome of matches.

Leaguepedia does a good job of providing , so that’s a good resource for tracking how teams are performing and seeing what their recent results have been like. It’s also useful for finding out when teams change their roster, which is something else you need to keep track of. Roster changes can have a BIG impact on a team’s performances.

There are some specific stats that you should look at when assessing individual LoL players, too, which are as follows:

Number of kills

Number of deaths

Kill/death ratio

Gold per minute

Overall gold count

Experience gain

There are plenty of websites that publish stats for players, and most of them are pretty good. The is always a good option, although the stats published there only relate to the leagues and tournaments organized directly by Riot Games.

Check what’s at stake

There are often LoL matches where there’s nothing at stake for one or both of the teams. For example, in the group stages of a tournament, a team might win their first two matches and guarantee their place in the next round. They’ll still have to play any remaining matches in the group stages, though.

In situations like this, teams that have already qualified are likely to treat their remaining group matches as “training matches.” They won’t necessarily play to win, but instead, use the opportunity to try out new moves and different strategies.

When there’s nothing at stake for BOTH teams in a match, we generally recommend not betting at all. If the two teams are going to be experimenting, it’s going to be tough to predict the outcome. If only ONE team has nothing at stake, however, it’s often worth backing their opposition. Even if the opposing team is weaker, they’ll be the only team actually trying to win. This SHOULD give them an advantage.

Avoid best of one matches

Most competitive LoL matches are played using best of three or best of five formats. Some use a best of one format though, and these can be tough to call. You can usually expect the better team to win over three or five maps, but upsets are much more common in single map matches. They’re notoriously unpredictable, so it’s best not bet on them without a VERY good reason.

Join multiple betting sites

Our final tip here is the easiest one to follow: We advise joining multiple betting sites. We suggest this for two very good reasons. First, you get to take advantage of more bonuses and rewards. Second, you can compare the odds and lines available for all the wagers you want to place. This allows you to ensure that you’re getting the best possible odds for your wagers, which can significantly improve your overall results.

You don’t have to join A LOT of different sites, but we do suggest at least two or three. Just make sure to only use reputable sites that you absolutely know can be trusted. The sites we recommend definitely meet those criteria, and provide an excellent all-around service too.